Post-cynicism prez

Boston Herald ^ | May 16, 2012 | Michael Graham

[suspects]

Welcome to the post-cynicism presidency.

In the good old days — pre-2008 — we voters knew politicians were motivated by self-interest. But we felt entitled to at least the pretense that their political positions were bold advocacy on behalf of the public good.

So you elect Deval “I won’t raise gas taxes or tolls” Patrick the politician, and you get a “The budget was worse than I thought” governor.

But President Barack Obama, who promised to be a transformative political figure, has pushed past that old paradigm completely. How can a candidate be “cynical” when he admits his shameless self-interest right up front?

I would love to talk to the one American — if he exists — who was surprised when Obama endorsed same-sex marriage. For his entire presidency, Obama has been the Ricky Martin of the gay marriage issue — the only way he could have surprised anyone would have been by not coming out.

Has he spent the past few years claiming to oppose it? Yes. But that was after Obama spent several years as a candidate in Illinois supporting it.

What’s most important here is that nobody, absolutely nobody, believed Obama’s statements defending traditional marriage.

And he knew we knew he was lying, as evidenced by his willingness to admit on ABC-TV that he had planned to change his position about same-sex marriage closer to the Democratic National Convention.

Question: Who plans to change their position on anything? I used to support the death penalty. Then I was confronted with the libertarian argument against it, that the government shouldn’t have the power of life and death over a citizen.

I realized that the argument was right so I changed my mind. I never said, “You know, I’ve been wrong about the death penalty, so next Thursday...

[Thorliveshere]

Pf! Yeah, right!

Oh, wait, was that cynical?